From time to time we like to talk about the weather. Yesterday we felt was note worthy enough to post about. At around 18:20 on August 26th 2023, I think it’s reasonable to say we had the heaviest rain we have seen in some time, certainly since launching this website. Having lived locally all my life (48yrs and counting) I genuinely cannot recollect a heavier individual downpour. Just have a look, the video fails to do it justice but you get the idea…
Avoiding the whole climate change debate, our immediate concern was with flooding. We have reported flooding of the Wildlife Garden in the past (click HERE for more info) and despite the Council having installed a significant soakaway in the lane behind the Garden, we still worried it wouldn’t stand up to this particular downpour.
Thankfully it did (well done Bristol City Council), and whilst there were the inevitable impacts of the pounding on the wildflowers, you can see from the aftermath shown in the video at around 2:20 minutes that visible impacts were minimal.
We are hopeful that the changes we have made to the Garden make it more resistent to flooding. Most the soil area is not walked on, hopefully relieving compaction, which is an issue in many gardens, helping worms go about their business of fixing the structure of the soil and allowing greater water penetration/storage. The roots of the larger woody species also help channel water deep down into the soil quickly.
The concern would be had this happened during a time when all soils/green surfaces were saturated, then the water in the streets, many of which flooded as a result of this downpour, could have been much worse. Damage to local large buildings attested to the fact that some of our infrastructure is not designed or too poorly maintained to handle very sudden and large quantities of water.
As a one off this downpour seems to have had little impacts that we can see or understand. This point of not understanding the issues is probably the most worrying aspect of all this.
If a point is reached and this type of rainfall becomes more frequent, even normal, we wonder how long before the Garden and the wider area floods more often with all the rain from the streets that has no free sewer into which it can run. Full of all sorts of nasties that will end up in the soils.
Wildlife Garden 